We Are ALL Berlusconis!
Wednesday, June 26th, 2013Bad news from today’s L’Huffington Post (i.e. the Italian one).
You’re a puttana. Sorry.
I’m a puttana, too. (A rooty-toot-toot, rooty-toot tattoo, too!)
But that’s ‘cuz we’re all puttane!
Not that up with your Italian? Well, you probably would rather not know what this is, I mean, that we all are. (Click if you dare . . .)
More to the issue: Who is saying such nasty things? It’s a certain Giuliano Ferrara, who these days heads the minor Italian daily Il Foglio Quotidiano which he founded himself back in 1996.
But the point is: He has long been a supporter of Silvio Berlusconi, since the 1990s at the latest, and in fact served as MEP and government minister under him. And he was outraged – OUTraged!! – by Monday’s court verdict that found his mentor (known popularly in Italy as Il Cavaliere, i.e. “the knight,” or even just Il Cav) guilty of paying for sex with the under-aged Karima El Mahroug (“Ruby the Heart Stealer”), and which sentenced him to seven years in prison. (Whether he will actually serve any time is quite another matter.)
So what Ferrara did yesterday was arrange a rally in support of Il Cavaliere, in Rome’s Piazza Farnese. Accompanied by a sound-system blaring the Rolling Stones’ Ruby Tuesday – classy, eh? – he harrangued the assembled crowd about Il Cav’s present plight, with his (own) wife at his side.* And the express name he gave the demonstration was in fact Siamo tutti puttane by which he meant, I suppose, that if Ruby was one – when, according to Ferrara, she merely enjoyed Il Cavaliere’s charm and conversation, and vice-versa – then we all are.
So that’s a relief, then. It’s not that ALL of us are puttane, just more-or-less those who agreed to turn up yesterday at Giuliano Ferrara’s Rome rally. If you want to click through, there’s even a photo-series on the page to help you identify just who these might be.
But maybe even not some of them: Also present there, according to the report, was Berlusconi’s own current main squeeze, 27-year-old Francesca Pascale, who afterwards took pains to declare Non sono una puttana! to surrounding journalists.
* Together with cardboard cut-outs of both Berlusconi and Hosni Mubarak (!) also on-stage, according to HuffPoIT journalist Andrea Punzo. Bizarre.
